Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Handshake Solutions, a line of business within the Philips Technology Incubator, has announced that it will be making its robust clockless IC design technology available to universities and institutions of higher education for teaching and research purposes. The move is in response to the increasing demand from companies in all sectors of the electronics industry for designers who have knowledge of clockless IC design. It’s another step in Handshake Solutions’ drive to bring the benefits of clockless (or self-timed) ICs into the mainstream, while also expanding the talent pool of designers capable of delivering these benefits.

Unlike conventional ICs, self-timed circuitry does not use a clock and its associated architecture to control activity on a chip. It therefore consumes less power and produces less electro-magnetic emission. This reduces the risk of interfering with sensitive circuitry, making it easier to integrate into large designs and resulting in a quicker time-to-market. Thanks to this unique combination of benefits, clockless design is extremely attractive to IC manufacturers in all areas of the market. In turn, these companies are increasingly looking for designers with experience of clockless design. To help meet this demand, Handshake Solutions is offering universities access to its complete design flow, related tools and the Haste design-entry language along with full documentation.

Initially released to customers at the beginning of 2004, the design flow supports all steps from design entry to gate-level implementation. It has been extensively field-tested in numerous real-life projects and has been proven to increase design productivity, speed system integration and reduce time-to-market.Haste is a dedicated design-entry language supporting parallelism and channel communication. Similar to the well-known C programming language and comparable with behavioral Verilog or VHDL, it is easily picked up by anyone familiar with traditional IC or software design.

“We’ve had numerous enquiries from universities and companies who want to use our products, particularly the Haste language,” said Wouter Van Roost, CEO of Handshake Solutions. “Companies are also keen to recruit designers who understand Haste. This package will give academic institutions the means to provide students with extremely marketable design skills, opening up huge opportunities for both students and universities. As more designers get to know Haste, we believe it will become an international standard for design entry, further speeding mainstream adoption of clockless ICs.”

A number of leading universities – such as the Eindhoven University of Technology, the University of Manchester, the University of Southern California and the University of Turku – already plan to evaluate the design flow, tooling and Haste language with a view to incorporating them into their computer engineering curriculums.

“Haste has proven itself the perfect vehicle for designing highly parallel VLSI systems,” commented Professor Kees van Berkel, who already uses it in his ‘VLSI programming’ course at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Professorvan Berkel is an acknowledged expert in the design of low-power circuits and systems and has helped pioneer clockless VLSI circuits and design tools.

Professor van Berkel of Eindhoven University of Technology uses Philips Handshake Technology to teach ‘clockless IC’ design		Philips clockless ‘0 GHz’ chips are used in a range of products including smart cards and new high-security passports.

High-resolution photographs can be downloaded from

www.handshakesolutions.com/More_information/Downloads/

For more information:

www.handshakesolutions.com/More_information/university/

For media inquiries, please contact
Philips Handshake Solutions / Public Relations Department
Hans Driessen
Tel.: +31 40 2746692
Mobile: +31 6 22409160
E-mail: hans.driessen@philips.com

About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 30.3 billion in 2004. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 159,700 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and silicon system solutions. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter